Her Name Is Calla, Bardens Boudoir, London

Londoners obviously preferred to stay at home tonight, either because it’s raining, or because the Manchester United - Barcelona game is apparently more important than good live music in a nice venue. Well, they might’ve made a mistake: Her Name Is Calla, already with a reputation for being a good band, are a really great live band. They play to an almost empty venue, yet are totally in to what they do, that’s for sure.

A lost-in-the-forest mood, rock-and-rolled by military drums, and here it comes, an amazing, gnawing violence, evolving slowly in long instrumental tracks where trombones and keyboards bring their warm, wheedling tones to this live experience. Her Name Is Calla have a singer, and not a bad one, but their tracks don’t focus on one score. It’s about mood rather than story, in other terms this isn’t narrative but evocative, there is no need for a leader here, and all musicians partake to the same powerful attempt at making telling noise.

There is something of Dead Meadow in these long voiceless moments, weren’t it for the drums beating time ceaselessly, preventing the music getting lost in psychedelica. However, Her Name Is Calla also offer almost a capella moments, where only a keyboard repeats obstinately the same note, as in a Kubrickian construction. Eyes wide shut, just listen to ‘A Moment Of Clarity’: dark and progressive, it ends with the singer yelling to death in an apocalyptic stage.

With their slow ups and downs, Her Name Is Calla deliver epic ballads of modern times, in a totally original manner. Beyond influences, they are original simply because they have things to say, with their hands and their guts: it’s seldom enough to be noteworthy. They deserve a better (and larger) audience. Wake up, London.